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The immigrant population in the U.S. hit a record high 42.4 million in July 2014, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies.

In a report obtained in advance by Breitbart News, CIS highlights new data about the foreign-born population (both legal and illegal) revealed in the 2014 American Community Survey (ACS). The report is authored by Steven Camarota, CIS’ director of research, and Karen Zeigler, the organization’s demographer.

According to CIS’ findings, the number of immigrants in the U.S. jumped by 2.4 million since July 2010 and the growth in immigrant population is “accelerating.” While the annual immigrant population averaged 430,000 people annually between 2010 and 2012, from 2012 to 2013 the immigrant population great 520,000 and 1.04 million from 2013 to 2014.

Overall, the report notes, immigrants made up 13.3 percent of the population in the U.S. in 2014, the highest percentage in more than a century. CIS compared that level to immigrants’ 6.2 percent share of the population in 1980. The Census Bureau projects that the immigrant share of the population will reach its highest level in history in 2023, at 14.8 percent and continue to increase through 2060 if current admissions levels continue.

Further, CIS adds, between 2010 and 2014, 5.4 million new immigrants settled in the U.S.

“Since the Great Recession began in 2007, at least 8.7 million new immigrants have settled in the country,” the CIS report reads. “New arrivals are offset by those who return to their home countries each year and by mortality. As a result, growth in the immigrant population is less than the number who enter.”

As of 2010, the counties of origin with the highest percentage increase in the number of immigrants in the U.S. were Saudi Arabia, which saw an increase of 93 percent. Bangladeshi immigrants increased 37 percent, Iraqi increased 36 percent, Egypt was up 25 percent and Pakistan, India, and Ethiopia all increased by 24 percent.

Mexico, meanwhile, had the greatest number of its people living in the U.S. with 11.7 million Mexicans living in the U.S. in 2014, growing 130,000 from 2013 to 2014 after experiencing a decline from 2010 to 2013. While the number of Mexican immigrants increased the number of immigrants from the Europe and Canada declined over the previous five years.

An earlier CIS report released in August, looking at the immigrant population based on the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), found that the immigrant population during the second quarter of this year was 42.1 million.

-In addition to immigrants, there were 16.2 million U.S.-born minor (<18) children with at least one immigrant parent in 2014, for a total of 58.6 million immigrants and their children. Immigrants and their minor children now account for more than one in six U.S. residents.

-The sending regions with the largest numerical increases in the number of immigrants living in the United States since 2010 were East Asia (up 642,000), South Asia (up 594,000), Sub-Saharan Africa (up 282,000), the Middle East (up 277,000), the Caribbean (up 269,000), and Central America (up 268,000).

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Immigrant-headed households in the U.S. use welfare at a much higher rate than their native-born counterparts and that trend holds true for both new and long-time immigrant residents, according to a new study.

According to a report released Wednesday from the Center for Immigration Studies, 51 percent of immigrant-headed households (both legal and illegal) reported using at least one welfare program during the year in 2012. Thirty-percent of native-headed households meanwhile used at least one welfare program.

The CIS report analyzed welfare data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Included in the center’s definition of welfare is Medicaid, cash, food, and housing programs.

“If immigration is supposed to benefit the country, then immigrant welfare use should be much lower than native use,” Steven Camarota the CIS’s Director of Research and the report’s author said. “However two decades after welfare reform tried to curtail immigrant welfare use, immigrant households are using most programs at higher rates than natives.”

Camarota noted that the skill and education level of many current immigrants is contributing to their welfare use.

“The low-skill level of many immigrants means that although most work, many also access welfare programs. If we continue to allow large numbers of less-educated immigrants to settle in the country, then immigrant welfare use will remain high,” he added.

While welfare use among both new and old immigrants is high – with 48 percent of immigrants in the U.S. for more than 20 years reporting welfare use – the rates vary based on region of origin.

In 2012, 73 percent of immigrant-headed households from Central America and Mexico reported using one of more welfare program. Households from the Caribbean used welfare at a rate of 51 percent, African immigrants were at 48 percent, South America at 41 percent, East Asia 32 percent, Europe 26 percent, South Asia 17 percent.

The report further highlights that while immigrant-headed households use welfare at a higher rate than natives they also pay taxes at a lower rate.

“On average, immigrant-headed households had tax liability in income and payroll taxes in 2012 that was about 11 percent less than native households, or about 89 cents for every dollar native households pay, based on Census Bureau data. Immigrant households have lower average incomes (from all sources) than native households and are a good deal larger, giving them more tax deductions. As a result, their average income tax liability is less than native households,” the report reads

Other findings in the CIS report include:

• No single program explains immigrants’ higher overall welfare use. For example, not counting subsidized school lunch, welfare use is still 46 percent for immigrants and 28 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 44 percent for immigrants and 26 percent for natives.

• Immigrant households have much higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives) and Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent). Immigrant use of cash programs is somewhat higher than natives (12 percent vs. 10 percent) and immigrant use of housing programs is similar to natives.

• Many immigrants struggle to support their children, and a large share of welfare is received on behalf of U.S.-born children. However, even immigrant households without children have significantly higher welfare use than native households without children – 30 percent vs. 20 percent.

• The welfare system is designed to help low-income workers, especially those with children, and this describes many immigrant households. In 2012, 51 percent of immigrant households with one or more workers accessed one or more welfare programs, as did 28 percent of working native households.

• The large share of immigrants with low levels of education and resulting low incomes partly explains their high use rates. In 2012, 76 percent of households headed by an immigrant who had not graduated high school used one or more welfare programs, as did 63 percent of households headed by an immigrant with only a high school education.

• The high rates of immigrant welfare use are not entirely explained by their lower education levels. Households headed by college-educated immigrants have significantly higher welfare use than households headed by college-educated natives – 26 percent vs. 13 percent.

We tracked down Mr. Ong and he gave us an exclusive interview. See what became the tipping point for his support of the Second Amendment here.

During a public hearing on gun violence in Hartford, Conn. on Monday, a legal immigrant by the name of Henson Ong issued a passionate defense of the Second Amendment and argued that gun control simply “does not work.” The video of Ong’s testimony has already surpassed 130,000 views on YouTube.

“Forgive me, English is not my first language. I am a legal immigrant and I am an American by choice,” he began, prompting applause from the audience.

“Thank you for giving me this opportunity to express my opinion and give my testimony in opposition to the majority of the proposed bills, which do nothing to deter future crimes,” he added. “Gun control doesn’t work.”

Ong then launched into a impassioned diatribe about what he considers to be the real problem fueling gun gun violence – “societal decay.”

“Your own history is replete with high school rifle teams, boy scout marksmanship merit badges,” he explained. “You could buy rifles at hardware stores, you could order them… your country was awash in readily available firearms and ammunition, and yet in your past you did not have mass school shootings*.”

“What changed?” he asked. “It was not that the availability of guns suddenly exploded or increased, it actually was decreased. What changed was societal decay,” he added, resulting in more applause.

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Ong pointed to the Washington, D.C. and Chicago as two cities with some of the strictest gun laws but also “the highest crime and murder rates.”

“If gun control actually did work, Washington, D.C. and Chicago would be the safest cities in your nation. But [they are] not, they have the toughest gun laws and the highest crime and murder rates,” he said.

Ong also defended Americans’ right to own so-called “assault rifles,” which are really just semi-automatic rifles. Citing a recent purchase of 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” by the Department of Homeland Security, he noted how the agency described the weapons as “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters.”

He went on: “Had the Koreans in the LA riots not had AR-15s and AK-47s with 30-round magazines – and Ruger 30s – their businesses would have burnt to the ground like all the other businesses in their neighborhoods. Theirs stood because they stood their ground.”

Driving a point home that many U.S. lawmakers don’t even seem to fully understand, the legal immigrant stated definitively that the Second Amendment’s purpose was not for hunting.

In closing, Ong quoted a famous statement by Judge Alex Kozinski in his dissent on the case of Silveira v. Lockye in 2002.

“My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime usually do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed only for those exceptionally rare circumstances when all other rights have failed. A free people can only afford to make this mistake once.”